Skateboard committee formed

A committee of interested parents and skateboarders — and $50,000 — will help Holden establish a skate park.

While nearly two dozen young skateboarders listened at the committee’s inaugural meeting Nov. 10, a dozen parents heard Recreation Director Denise Morano charge them with driving the effort.

“It would be your project,” Morano told the group. “You’ll do the fundraising, you’ll knock on people’s doors. We’re not going to do it. You people are going to do it.”

Morano gave a history of the skate park effort in Holden, which resulted in a park that was run in the Dawson Recreation Area from 1997 to 2002. The town was told, Morano said, that it would have to be monitored, and to fund the monitor, a fee of $25 per season (April to September) was charged.

The effort was popular at first, with more than a hundred passes sold the first year, dwindling to around 70 for 1999 and 2000, down to 37 passes in 2001, after Rutland opened its skate park. The Dawson park fell into disrepair and was closed in 2002.

Monitoring, several parents said, was part of the problem with the old park.

“Whenever there is a guard, it immediately diminishes the use,” parent Marta Ferreira said.

Morano said the town is not looking at monitoring its new park. She said the project must be directed by the people who will be using it, relying on input from the teens who know what they want and need.

“We just want to make sure it’s a park that everyone’s going to use,” said Assistant Town Manager Jacquelyn Kelly.

Kelly outlined the committee’s work as not just fundraising, but site search and selection, and design planning. How other towns have managed the effort, and how their parks are faring will also be part of the study.

Recreation Department and administration representatives will be part of the effort, Kelly said.

Several parents asked the town to throw its weight behind the project in the hope that town government’s voice would carry more clout with local business owners who might donate. Morano said business owner donations needn’t just be money, but advice, workers or materials.

She asked that parents and teens sign in and asked for volunteers to help form the committee, which she hoped could meet the same night as the Recreation Commission, the second Tuesday of the month.

The first meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 12 in the selectmen’s room at the Starbard Building. Committee volunteers include John Blunt, who agreed to head the effort, Nathan Moore, Susanne Carroll, Rutland resident Kim Miranda, Marta Ferreira and Mark Flionis.